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Sunday, October 9, 2011

Occupy Wall Street

It's messy, and I think it's wonderful.

After all, this is what true democracy is really, really about -- the rights of Americans to pick themselves up and march against what they see as injustice, the ills of the society they live in. We have a rich heritage of doing just that in this country. But it seems like until now we had forgotten that.

It's wonderful to have it back!

Occupy Wall Street, like I said is messy. And that, I think is just what the good ole' US of A has been missing in its domestic discourse for way too long now. Our discourse has been about soundbites. Politicians say harmless little tidbits, wrapped in a bow for the 24 hour news cycle. Harmless and spineless little nothings.

That's why I love Occupy Wall Street. A vibrant democratic system should be messy, not about neat little soundbites, and that is exactly what Occupy Wall Street is.

In fact, there's a lot of criticism of the Occupy Wall Street movement for not having specific, clear demands. Sorry, but isn't that exactly what a grass-roots movement of the people is all about? To have not specific, but a broad variety of demands? These are people of every walk of life, after all, who are fed up with what our society has evolved into -- where the power of the powerful has gotten way out of hand, leaving the other 99 percent virtually powerless. It would be pretty difficult to sum up their frustrations into just a few soundbites, right?

I think it was former Democratic Senator Russ Feingold who recently said that Occupy Wall Street will now show the country what a real protest movement is all about. I could not agree with that statement more. After all, now that a genuine, grass-roots protest movement has started to take hold in the United States, it's a bit more obvious that the so-called Tea Party was really full of shit, isn't it? I mean, what were those people really, except Republicans with a new name who opposed health care reform, right? What have they been screaming about? The government spending money to prevent the economy from falling off a cliff? Would they rather we had fallen off the cliff?? Aren't things bad enough?

The goal of this movement seems to be to give voice to the frustration of our nation's disempowered -- what the movement says is the 99 percent of us. And if it is just for the sake of giving that frustration voice, that is enough. This is a society, after all, where the voice of the average person is becoming increasingly ignored by the powers that be, whether it is the mainstream media or political parties. What we are witnessing unfold on the streets of our City is quite possibly the end of that.

Workers have a right to work for pay and you do the work you agreed to. You don't hold the organization random or hostage for your own selfishness.

Use the analogy of Boeing Corporation. Protestors have held back progress on the new jets and it was Bob Turner, our congressional leader who stood up against Obama preventing Boeing from moving to a Right to Work state.

Same with Wall Street protestors. Wall street is the backbone of global finance in this economy. While there is truth to the fact there are misdeeds, there has been a lot of good as well when true american corporations get off the ground running and get financed and dreams become reality.

Absolutely NOT. Barack Obama's donations came from guys like Jamie Dimon and corporate big whigs in the financial sector. He was a lot closer than people were led to believe with one Tony Rezco.

Tony Rezco's whereabouts are unknown right now and his sentencing has yet again been postponed while another trial of another person involved in corruption is ongoing.

Barack Obama's administration is directly responsible for the financial crisis. To seperate this current administration and say weath redistribution is fair and ethical is wrong and immoral.

There have been misdeeds on wall street at times. I don't think anyone is denying this. But protesting Wall Street isn't the answer.

Deals like Solyandra and others were backdoor favors from Obama which were corruption and political favors.

But going after Wall Street and then going after cops in the area blocking traffic and the like in Manhattan's financial district or harrasing at times employees is the wrong approach. They are not to blame. Wealth creation is not the problem. The problem is the corrupt political ties.

Many of the political protestors in fact are union employees or representative of the unions in this nation which are corrupt selfish thugs themselves.

Remember there are seperate facets at play here:

#1: The Corrupt Political System and Unionization support

#2: Wall Street Investment Banking side is NOT Corrupt. In fact the opposite is true. They persue deals which help establish and finance corporate deals in this nation. Many of these are corporations and companies prevalent in American society today which we all are familiar with and take for granted time in and time out.

So blaming Wall Street when they have done so much good over the course of history is DEAD WRONG. Wall Street did get involved with a host of fradulent deals at time with unsavory business ethics and techniques and the protestors aren't seperating out this behavior.

This administration is corrupt. At the same time of the coin: One can go after corporate misdeeds when they occur and use the correct procedures in order to adjudicate them when necessary.

Remember, WE THE PEOPLE? Well, WE want to be heard, regardless of how much money we have in the bank (or hidden overseas.) MAJORITY RULES, doesn't it? Therefore, the more people who unite with the OCCUPY WALL STREET movement the better the chance that we will all see changes that will help enhance our lives.

Unfortunately, some of Anonymous' (whether it's one or many) comments is indicative of the discourse atmosphere of the country: throwing out ridiculous extremes or utilizing one piece of an argument as representative of an entire argument.

I'm NOT in a union, I have a comfortable job that I work very hard at, I DON'T want to see corporations dismantled, BUT I do believe that alot of wrong was done by those in "Wall Street" and it's ridiculous that no one's been investigated/arrested for what is essential gaming and destroying an entire country's economy.

I don't consider "Wall Street" as some sort of singular entity bogeyman - it's the people in the firms who makes decisions, and it's those individual decision makers that need to be looked at. I'm sure there are perfectly fine individuals among there, but there's also those who might, and I stress "might" because I believe in a judicial system and a process of investigation, have profited from wrongdoing at the expense of everyone else. The colossal mess that has occurred probably didn't occur due to one person's "oops".

That's why I'm thumbs up for Occupy Wall Street - the messages might be mixed, but wanting accountability is one of them that I agree with.